Courtenay's solitaire AAR

[Courtenay]

M/A 44 Allied #3: 4: Sn, St, R, F, St, R. No modifier, IMP advance 3.
The Axis is pleased with this. The Allies are not.
CW, SU, Ch land, US combined, Fr naval.

The US wants see if the they can keep up the good work in the China Sea. They have three naval moves they want to make, they have attacks they want to make, and while they would like to move in Europe, this weather makes any attacks there very problematical. Thus the combined.

[Courtenay]

The US moves Clark, escorted by a BB, from the Brisbane to the Bismark Sea. They move the empty Wasp II from the China Sea to Truk, where there is a 7 pt CVP ready to fit on it. They move the three reorganized carriers from Truk to the China Sea.

The French move some ships.

[Courtenay]

MWiF informs me that the US can try for a naval action in the Bay of Bengal. I had not realized this. There are no US ships in the sea area, but there are a couple of US planes. There is no reason not to. Some Japanese planes could fly out; they do not. Both sides roll 6's for search. A six? I think that this produced another no combat result. MWiF informs me that the Allies found the Japanese. Four box +1 for CVP + 1 for CP = 6. OK. The sole Japanese unit in the sea area, a CP, is annihilated. Burma just went out of supply.

[Courtenay]

The US tries for combat in the South China Sea. In storm, it of course includes the submarines, which had sat out all the earlier combats. The US rolls a three, the Japanese a four. Three? In a storm, the big US fleet in the three box does not find the Japanese. However, the two speed six submarines in the four box do. The Japanese have been reduced to a single escorting cruiser. The US has five surprise points. It uses two of them to turn the Japanese result of 2A to NE, and increases damage from one D and three A to two D and 3A. Note that one more column increase changes the damage to X and 3A, which is exactly the same as 2D and 3A, so stopping the Japanese damage was clearly correct

[Courtenay]

The next round, the US rolls a 5, the Japanese a 3. No combat. The Japanese are very relieved that the weather was bad. Those rolls in clear weather would probably have emptied the sea area. As it is, there are still 7 Japanese CPs in the sea area. This is not enough to get the Netherlands oil back to Japan, but is enough to get all the non-oil resources.

[Courtenay]

The CW rails a RSA INF from Gibraltar to Aachen, and a GAR from Paris to Aachen. The Russians rail a GAR to Harbin.

In the storm, the Allies don't do much. The CW moves to take Taranto, with the ARM marine unit moving through the whole heel of the Italian boot. A CW marine creeps one hex north along the coast into a mountain, flipping itself because of the rain. The Russians take the unoccupied Ruhr oil resource and Hannover. The US moves the three MAR units that invaded the Philippines adjacent to Manila; one uses the MAR ability to cross water, so there are two units in one hex and one in another.

The Chinese move up to attack Umezu.

The CW debarks the two HQ to the two heel hexes in Italy, and then unloads four corps and a division onto Italy.

The US unloads Clark adjacent to Manila.

[Courtenay]

The Allies declare four attacks: one in Italy, one in China, one against a surrounded out of supply flipped unit in Rumania, and one against Manila.

The Japanese use two cruisers to support Manila. I keep forgetting that the defender is also halved when doing shore bombardment into forest or jungle. The Japanese would like to have had another point of shore bombardment.

The US provides 13 points of NGS (halved to 6.5) against Manila.

No one uses any air in any of the attacks.

[Courtenay]

The Allies do the Chinese attack first. The Chinese think it a good one, at +6.4. They are wrong. There is no such thing as a good Chinese attack. [:)] They are convinced of it. The Chinese miss the fractional odds roll (.538) and then roll an 8, for the dreaded 14 result. The Chinese kill a Japanese MOT, but at the cost of three units, a CAV XX, a GAR, and an INF. Also, all of the Chinese are flipped.

[Courtenay]

Next was the attack in Italy. I managed to forget to take a screenshot. It was a +10.667 attack, against the GAR that moved out of Taranto into the mountains, flipping itself. The CW missed its fractional odds roll, and then rolled a 7, for a 1/1 result. An Italian GAR and the Sydney MIL were destroyed.

The key thing about this attack is that it takes Taranto out of Italian ZOC, which will add five to the CW garrison by the end of the turn. At the moment the Allies have a garrison value of 6, which will go up to 10 without using HQs to stack extra aircraft, and up to 12 with overstacking, and that is if the Allies don't manage to destroy the GAR that is currently ZOCing Bari.

[Courtenay]

The Russians attack the surrounded German MOT next. It is almost an automatic attack, at +18, but not quite. The Russians roll a 14, though, killing the unit without loss. The last of the surrounded German units was eliminated.

[Courtenay]

Lastly, the US attacks Manila. This another almost automatic attack, at +18.667. The US makes the fractional odds roll, (.083), and then rolls only a 6. However, this is a good place for a six, as that is more than enough. The Philippine TER dies, and Manila is captured.

With Clark on the coast, Manila will be in supply from the Bismark Sea in any weather, and will make an even better fleet base for the US than Truk.

[Courtenay]

The US uses both C-47s to reorganize a CW MOT that attacked in Italy, while the CW uses a Sunderland to reorganize the MAR that flipped moving up the coast.

The Russians use Timeshenko to reorganize two units in Austria, while Montgomery reorganizes three units in Italy.

[hazmaxed]

ORIGINAL: Courtenay

MWiF informs me that the US can try for a naval action in the Bay of Bengal. I had not realized this.

It's times like these that I think MWiF is an excellent staff officer, and I want to promote him and give him a medal.

[Courtenay]

I got busy, and the activity that got dropped was posting to his AAR. I actually played a few more turns, and will now post them.

[Courtenay]

M/A 44 Axis #6:
It, Ge combined, Ja land

The Axis decides to use it navies.

[Courtenay]

Every submarine that can reach goes to the Bay of Biscay. One Italian sub goes to Eastern Med.

In the eastern Med, the lone Italian Sub tries to fight the very small number of ships there. The US reacts a FTR to the zero box. The Italians find the Allies on a roll of 2, but the Allies find the Italians when they roll a 1. The Allies adjust their combat column up one, changing an A to a D. Both Allied cruisers abort on a rolls of 1 and 6. The Italian sub aborts on a roll of 10. It goes back to Rhodes, not wanting to be captured by the Americans.

[Courtenay]

In the Bay of Biscay, three Axis subs rolled a 10; the Allies rolled a 4. In storm, no one found anyone.

[Courtenay]

The Germans move the Magdeburg MIL towards Venice, and move Kesselring one hex southwest, to a hex that only had one corps in it. The Finns move Mannerheim to within one hex of Helsinki.

The Italians move a MTN into Turin and the Rome MIL moves from Dusseldorf to Essen, where it joins with the flipped corps left behind there.

The Japanese decide that the sight of a flipped Chiang is too tempting to ignore. The move up to attack him.

[Courtenay]

The Japanese declare their attack.

The Chinese throw their carefully hoarded bomber into support. There is no other air in range, except for the Chinese FTR, which can't do anything useful.

The Japanese make their attack. They have no MECH class units involved (their MECH is frustratingly one hex away), so the Chinese get to pick the table. The Chinese look at the two units being attacked, Chiang and the Chinese ART unit, and shudder. The Chinese pick blitz. The Japanese are making a a +6.167 attack. This is not as good an attack as I thought it would be; I missed the fact that one of the two Chinese units was a division, and so the Japanese only got +3 for disorganization, not +4. The Japanese continue their recent tradition of rolling well in attacks, +14. This blitzes the Chinese off the map, but no one dies on either side. The Japanese have to flip two divisions. For once, I picked the right table. If this had been an assault, both Chiang and the ART would have died. This is not a good result for the Japanese, as it adds a bit to the Chinese production, and the Chinese will not have to spend oil to reorganize Chang.

[Courtenay]

The Japanese decide that leaving air units in Rabaul is a luxury they can not afford, and withdraw two of them.